Oh good grief… Funky had to go and open up the can of worms that is Durwood’s age in today’s strip.

Holly does her level best to draw my fire away with a “joke” related to the major Christian holiday that is NOT the one less than a week away, but it is to no avail. I’m sure Jessica’s laughing was annoying and Holly’s joke succeeded in quieting her down, but the statement that set up the joke remains. When commenting about how young Darin and Jess look, one ought have a rough idea of how young they are. Instead, we have this:

13 responses to “Youth will be served… Pepperoni”

Good grief is right, BanTom is trying oh so hard to turn Boy Lisa and Blondie into a “young couple just starting out” even though it’s completely false. It’s been at LEAST eighteen years since they graduated from high school and probably more than that, which means they’re closing in on forty at a minimum. He has this enormous cast of characters yet when he wants to do a “young couple starting out” arc he has to retcon old Act II characters, which says a lot about a) his incredible disregard for continuity and b) his opinion of his loyal readers.

This makes me wonder what Westviewians really give up for Lent, since there doesn’t seem to be much in their lives pleasurable enough to make abstaining from it an act of discipline. So what’s left? Smirking? Puns?

IMO he brought Darin and Jessica back with two specific arcs in mind: the huge Frankie Mega arc and the Jessica’s film/Plantman/John Darling/Barbie saga. He also squeezed a baby out of them (so to speak) which provided an opportunity to do the “Lisa has a baby” arc again. Which he did.

Because otherwise they’ve been less than worthless. Boy Lisa invented some sort of pizza breakfast app and he gave Summer the flu, while Jessica did nothing of any consequence other then those two arcs I mentioned above. She didn’t even get to star in her own delivery arc.

It’s so strange how he ignores the Fairgoods. Remember Boy Lisa’s mystery adoptive half-sister? What the hell was that all about? And that arc where Fred suffered a stroke on the toilet, revealing both his fondness for “big dick” gags and how his marriage to Ann was a loveless dream-killing sham. Boy, the strip was way more interesting back then, eh?

I think the explanation is much simpler, really. All of this isn’t intended as some attempt at story-telling, so ignoring continuity and character traits and so forth aren’t important. The strip as it is today is just filler, tossed off until he can get to that 50th anniversary. He’s phoning it in because, if he’s gotten away with it for the last few years, why would anyone stop him now? How could they?

In legal terms I believe this is called setting a precedent. Tom Batiuk can rightly tell the syndicate that if they didn’t complain before, how can they complain now? Obviously the strip passed muster enough for them to publish, and nothing has changed since. He’s still making the same product as before. I honestly think he can make that argument, and in that case “quality” is irrelevant.